Mr. Malibu’s Forty Most Famous – The Power of Social Currency

Have you ever experienced absolute freedom from any perceptual limitation? This book seeks to cause catastrophic wreckage to your perceptual restrictions.

While we live in a largely celebrity driven society where the rich and famous play role models for millions who seek similar lifestyles and dreams, the very perception of fame and celebrity itself is in significant transition. More and more, those who are having a positive impact on people and the world are earning the celebrity status, while less and less is this status based on actors in a movie or TV show, or just simply owning a mountain of money. There are also those with billions who have earned infamous status by being genuine rotten apples.

None the less, the value of social currency and how it is perceived is of keen interest to anyone interested in any successful venture. Social currency is at the heart of celebrity and as the perception of it transitions, seismic shifts are already on the horizon.

The psychological impact from exposure to the exploding pace of diverse content in social media (which is affecting millions who are not even in social media and they don’t know how it is affecting them yet), as well as engaging in frequent texting and emails throughout the day is very clear: people are finding a radical increase in content irrelevancy and latent identity crisis issues. These forces are changing peoples’ perception of what constitutes “celebrity.” Fame is subjective on many levels, depending on what is important to an individual and not the rest of the world. Whether it is sports, entertainment, or politics, for example, name recognition and related stories about the celebrities’ personalities and lives are what swirl in most minds tuned into “mainstream” communication channels. How that name recognition and how their stories are perceived are largely unquestioned.

Asking the fun question of how famous people got famous is the main the inspiration for writing this book and research has produced some fascinating discoveries. One obvious thing millions of people do when asking what made a person famous is to simply read the celebrity’s Wikipedia page. Then if they dig a little deeper, that is where it gets super scattered super fast with sifting through dragged out and vague reports mixed with questionable sources and ad bombardment. Add getting mugged by reading an article only to find out it was written five or ten years ago, and piecing together a realistic snapshot of a celebrity’s current status becomes a wild goose chase down rabbit holes.

After reading through enough Wikipedia pages, we see how all these famous people are stuck in a particular story framework, regardless of the demand to keep it encyclopedia-like. This is precisely where this book is targeted: combine wild creative elements with the vigilant questioning of presumed perceptions and include a deeper psychological analysis into what is behind these celebrity stories, and you have this book. If you’re willing to adventurously “read at your own risk” with an open imagination, you will have a lot of laughs and insights in this ride of words covering these forty most famous people.